FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT WARDEN - PAGE 4

"The Shawshank Redemption" (Frank Darabont, 1994) at 7:05 p.m., 10:10 p.m. on TBS. "The Shawshank Redemption's" story and atmosphere seem calculated to make us abandon hope. But, as its own poster reveals, this film is poised to sell hope right back to us. It's a prison movie, of course, almost an archetypal one. Adapting Stephen King's novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as his main cons, director-writer Darabont gives us all the old symbolic settings: the high walls and bare yard, the spartan warden's office, the tiers and rows of bleak and clamorous cells.

An inmate who escaped down a 60-foot long rope of bedsheets removed a seventh-floor jail window without the aid of any tools, and similar windows are also vulnerable, the warden said Sunday. Hugo Selenski, suspected in the murders of five people found buried in his yard, escaped Friday by climbing down a rope made from 12 prison-issue bedsheets, the Luzerne County Correctional Facility warden said. Selenski remained at large Sunday. The escape occurred at about 9:30 p.m., near the end of a two-hour period during which individual cells are unlocked and inmates in the overcrowded maximum security unit are permitted to socialize.

Michael Lane, director of the state's prison system since 1981, was named Monday the new secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, overseeing a budget of about $4 billion and a staff of 7,500 employees. Gov. James Thompson tapped Lane to replace Greg Baise, who resigned Sunday to devote more time to his campaign for state treasurer. Lane will take over the job as state highway director effective Jan. 16 and will be replaced at the Department of Corrections by Kenneth McGinnis, a longtime department employee who is warden of the Jacksonville Correctional Center.

A medal awarded to a dog who sniffed out survivors in the rubble of the Blitz was sold Friday at auction in London for $35,700. The Dickin Medal was awarded to Rip, who was found abandoned in an air raid shelter and adopted by E. King, an Air Raid Precaution warden (left). Rip found more than 100 people trapped by German bomb damage in World War II. He had no rescue training, said animal charity PDSA.

It has been nearly two decades since a former Illinois governor reported to a federal prison. The last one, Dan Walker, recounted some of the more demeaning moments of his experience behind bars in a recently published autobiography, "The Maverick and the Machine." One day, the warden spotted a gold class ring from the U.S. Naval Academy that Walker hadn't taken off his hand for 45 years. The warden ordered him to remove it. Walker refused. The warden had guards force Walker to his knees, then soap his fingers while holding his arms behind his back to finally remove the ring.

Who's in it: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, James Cromwell, Burt Reynolds, Cloris Leachman, Nelly. What it's about: A remake of Reynolds' 1974 prison football story about a disgraced pro player who ends up behind bars, where he must put together a team of inmates to play the warden's team of guards. Worth watching? . "It's incredibly lame, but there are bright spots. ... It's a movie worth remaking simply because this spoof of 'the big game' reduces football to the genetic freak show it has become."

The search continued Friday in the Joliet area and in Chicago for a man who escaped from Will County Jail while on trial for murder. The guard on duty at the time of the escape is to appear for a disciplinary hearing next week, authorities said. Harlan Veerman, chief deputy jail warden, said Clarence Dace, described as "tall and skinny," apparently slipped through a 7 1/2-inch gap in the cage of a prisoner-holding area, grabbed a set of keys hanging on a nearby wall and made his escape Thursday.

Anyone who was dazzled by David Lynch's macabre and mystical filmmaking techniques in the television/movie series "Twin Peaks" will be doubly pleased with the thrilling new drama/satire "Natural Born Killers." Veteran director Oliver Stone uses an intriguing storyline and the acting talents of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis to escape from his normal docudrama type films. Stone explores the minds of a pair of fictional serial killers, Mickey and Mallory Knox (Harrelson and Lewis)

Barbara Brotman, in her Tempo article (Nov. 27) about Paul Crump's rehabilitation in prison, credits ". . . a reform-minded warden" and states that "he met Nelson Algren through a fellow prisoner." That "fellow prisoner" had more to do with the rehabilitation of Paul Crump than either the warden or Nelson Algren. He was Edward R. Balchowsky, who along with myself and 3,000 other Americans was a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought the fascist-led Falangist rebellion against the legally elected Spanish Republic.